Greek banks are being hit by a wave of redemptions as the country's most wealthy citizens and corporations look to move their money offshore or to international financial institutions perceived as safer homes for their assets.

Wealthy Greeks and companies have been clamouring to move their cash deposits to banks such as HSBC or France's Société Générale, which operate large branches in the country. They are among those to have received several billion euros of new money in recent weeks.

HSBC's private banking in the country is understood to have been flooded with business, while the local operations of several other major international banks have already seen large inflows of money.

“Greece continues to look like a slow-motion train crash,” Steve Barrow, head of Group of 10 currency strategy at Standard Bank Plc in London, wrote in a report. “The crash has not occurred yet but it is coming. Efforts to avoid a crash seem doomed to failure, whether it’s emergency loans or some other initiative. Bond spreads are likely to widen much further.”